Huge turnout to test electronic voting

November 03, 2008

Even with nearly a quarter of the vote already cast before the polls open Tuesday, city and suburban election officials are bracing for some of the longest voting lines in history and expected an onslaught of more than 3 million to show up at polling places.

This election marks the biggest test yet of electronic voting in Chicago and the collar counties, and the first time early voting has been used here in a general presidential election. More than 779,000 people cast ballots in early voting that will not be counted until the polls close Tuesday.

"People are extremely excited about this election, and it is a wonderful thing to see," said Michelle Shafer of Sequoia Voting Systems. "But it is going to be an unprecedented volume with a million moving parts in which even the smallest thing can go wrong."

Voting officials throughout Chicago and its suburbs acknowledge unfamiliarity with the first use of early voting amid a highly contested presidential race has bred skepticism, conspiracy theories and rumors.

"We don't run the early votes through a Mixmaster," said James Allen, spokesman for the Chicago Board of Elections Commissioners. "But with what has happened in the past in Florida and Ohio, why wouldn't people be concerned?"

Cook County Clerk David Orr said all the early voting totals are stored on computer files and are awaiting tally with the rest of the votes on Election Day at the 2,290 precincts in the Cook suburbs.

"As you know, no ballots are counted until 7 o'clock" on Election Night, Orr said. "And they are merged with the precinct results as they come in."

In both suburban Cook County and the city of Chicago, the technological path of a ballot has undergone an electronic metamorphosis in recent years.

In both jurisdictions, voters have a choice between filing a paper ballot and using a computer touch screen. Election officials predict the long lines will prompt even more voters to opt for paper ballots Tuesday, because voting that way can be accomplished more quickly.

Chicago and Cook County officials suffered serious glitches in their first use of electronic voting in 2006 but have largely overcome those growing pains in elections since. Most collar counties have been using electronic voting such as optical scanning of paper ballots for much longer and have been largely glitch-free.

Here's how votes are counted in Chicago and Cook County. Many suburban election authorities have similar systems.